The Blue Rose
by Therese Delacoeur
Summary: What happens to the heroes who fail? This is Marie's story of a second chance. Read and Review! :D


A/N: This was written for a graduating friend of mine, to remind her to go out and grab her dreams. I'm hoping that this speaks to others, too. Feel free to read and let me know what you think!

_**The Blue Rose**_

When you fall asleep, you're supposed to be safe. I mean, you wouldn't willingly become unconscious if you thought you were going to be attacked by wild wolves or bears or your little brother or something crazy like that. Bedrooms are a sanctuary. Maybe that's why little kids are so terrified of the monsters in the closet—they worry that the sanctity of their rooms has been unknowingly contaminated, and they won't discover the error until it is too late, and they are fast asleep and dead.

But what happens when the monsters aren't in the closet, but in your mind?

I'm getting ahead of myself. The first dream had no monsters. Even though it was the first of what would become a lifetime's worth of dreams, I don't remember it particularly well. I can tell you my impressions of the dream, what I remembered when I woke up that morning: ghostly laughter, the trill of pipes, a whirling dance that made the stars above us spiral into a never-ending circle, a shock of red hair in the night, a pair of dark eyes that were like watery mirrors.

And a rose bush. I remember a beautiful rose bush. I saw it only once in that dream before I was swept up in the dance again, so it's odd that I can remember it so clearly. (But that's the way of dreams, isn't it? You remember the strangest things, the insignificant things that mean more than you could ever imagine.) It was full of leaves and shadows and tightly furled buds; there were no blossoms open yet. Despite the lack of flowers, my head was filled with the heavy perfume of roses.

I woke up that morning smelling roses. The scent quickly faded from my nose, but I couldn't get the memory of that scent out of my head. (Maybe that's why I remember the rose bush of all else of that first night; who knows?)

My teachers and friends all remarked on my inability to focus that day, though in my opinion Morgan went a little too far in speculation as to the cause.

"So who's the lucky boy, eh?"

I looked up from my bag lunch to see Morgan staring at me, one hand on her hip and a smile that had nosy/smug best friend written all over it. I turned back to my sandwich. "What're you talking about, Morgan?"

I could still hear the smile in her voice as she plunked herself down on the seat next to mine. "C'mon, Marie, you don't hide it very well."

"Hide what?" I was trying not to become annoyed, but Morgan had this gift for being annoying just by breathing.

"Oh!" Morgan huffed and crossed her arms. "It's so obvious. You've had this weird dreamy look on your face all morning. Don't deny it," she added sternly when I scoffed. "I'm not the only one who's noticed. But I'm the only one who's figured out why it's there."

I swallowed my bite of sandwich, waiting for the rest. But Morgan seemed insistent on making me ask. I sighed and capitulated. "And you think it's there because…?"

"A guy, of course!" she crowed triumphantly. "So tell me—who is it? Is it Andy?"

She laughed when I made a face. "Aw, just kidding. But really, tell me who! Please?" She made such a pitiful face that I had to smile.

"It's no one, Morgie. Really."

She raised one nearly-invisible eyebrow. "Now that I don't believe."

"I'm telling the truth! I don't like anybody—" A memory of dark laughing eyes and fiery hair flashed through my mind and made me swallow my words. Morgan watched the expression on my face with increasing smugness. "Here," I finished weakly.

"I knew it!" she shrieked. Heads turned in the cafeteria at her exultant bellow, but when they realized it was Morgan, they returned to their lunches.

"Can you keep it down?!" I hissed at her. She looked slightly chastened; she lowered her voice, at least.

"Who is it?" she whispered. She thought for a moment. When she opened her mouth to guess, I cut her off.

"You won't guess it," I told her flatly. She looked mildly deflated. "I don't even know his name."

Her deep blue eyes sparkled with renewed interest. "Ooh, a mystery man! This oughta be fun. Where did you meet him?"

"Um…" I racked my brain for some sort of suitable answer, but only came up with: "The woods."

"The woods?" Morgan echoed, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "What kind of a guy is this, anyway?"

"The mysterious kind," I said dryly. We both laughed, and then that was the end of the questioning. I was relieved that both the interrogation had stopped and Morgan was content with the 'normal' answers I gave her. Even Morgan McCollum, fantasy obsessed as she was, would have trouble understanding why I was obsessing over a dream. But the dream wouldn't go away. Even after our conversation moved on to the more typical gossip on which my best friend thrived, I still couldn't focus on Morgan's words. The smell of the roses was still coated my nose and my tongue as I tried to breathe, as I tried to speak. I was a prisoner to my dream, and I couldn't even remember it!

The next night's dream was a bit more real than the last. I had no trouble remembering it in the morning.

I was in the woods again, but this time I was not a part of the dancing. In typical dream fashion, I floated—no body, no arms or legs, just a pair of eyes and ears drifting, invisible, above the crowd, able to see and hear. And smell, I realized. I breathed deeply, allowing my nonexistent lungs to fill completely with rich scents of burning wood and blooming roses and a wilder tang, one of deep forest and racing stream and the clear, crisp starlight above us all.

...Roses? I looked around, and there, in a secluded corner, sat the rose bush from my dream the night before. There was a slight difference, though, and it was a good minute before I could realize what it was: the buds were blooming. I took another deep breath and drifted closer to the flowers so that I could see the flowers better.

But as I approached the bush, I noticed that the roses on this bush were different from any others I had ever seen before. Instead of a deep blood-red, or a blushing pink, or even a sweet and buttery yellow, the flowers were the richest shade of blue I had ever seen. It reminded me of a dark storm cloud, fat and full of rain, or a lake at midnight, or even a good black eye. I silently chuckled at that last description, and the rose's perfume swirled around my mouth and down my throat like wine. Before I could enjoy the flowers further, an especially exuberant couple circled crazily by my location, and I was whisked back into the sky to observe the crowd once more.

And what a crowd it was! What energy they had! Constantly moving and whirling and spinning in crazy dances that made my nonexistent head hurt just to watch; I could hardly imagine what it would be like to actually be a part of such chaos. (Or maybe I could imagine…The dream the night before…) They never stood still for a more than a moment, and even then they quivered with a frantic, nervous energy that blurred their outlines in the moonlight and firelight and light, fey music that seemed to come from the very trees and air that surrounded them.

Some were tall and willowy, lovely in their supple limbs and graceful features. Others were compact but still handsome in their apparent strength and cavalier attitude. Still others were neither excessively tall nor exceedingly short, but of a more natural height and stance. These, to my human eyes, were the most striking of all—they had a more human appearance, but were the absolute epitome of what human beauty was and the wish of what it could be.

Any in that crowd would have been remarkable and immediately recognizable among a group of ordinary people; but here, in this throng of the exceptional, it was only the most glorious who stood out in the masses of color and confusion. I couldn't tell you, even now, what drew my eye to him, of all the handsome men there in my dream. He was attractive (okay, drop-dead gorgeous), and he was rather tall, and his laughter was maybe the nicest to listen to (not femininely high, but not terrifyingly deep, it was a nice compromise between the two, a baritone that rose and fell with the sweetest of inflections), but still: there were those who were fairer and taller and louder than he was.

There was no reason for me to have seen him, my Brian, but for two reasons. One, his hair was bright red, turning a deeper amber when he danced beside the bonfire, and I was struck by the familiar shade from my dream the night before. And two, he looked up at me. At me! As if he could see me, even though I was a dream-ghost! When all I did was float, staring at him as if he was crazy, he smiled the brightest, warmest smile that I had ever and would ever receive. It was a smile that spoke of intimate secrets and secret desires: a smile which said everything needed to be said in an instant.

If I'd had a face at that moment, I believe I would've been turning a shade of red that would rival his hair. No boy, let alone this paragon of male perfection, had ever glanced my way before, let alone given me such a look. I was inclined, I admit, to bask in the moment for longer than was perhaps wise. So bask I did, in his heavenly beautiful presence, even when he returned his attention to his partner in the reel, where it properly belonged.

I basked for too long. A cold wind swept across the glade, making even my insubstantial form shiver. Clouds crowded across the sky, causing the stars to wink out one by one. The moon was smothered in the thick cover, and it was suddenly much darker in the woods. The dancing and the music stopped, abruptly choked of all its life. The dancers stood still, completely still, save for their heaving chests betraying their heavy breathing.

Brian let go of his partner to stand alone. His hair rippled in the chill wind, his intricate clothes flattening against his body and outlining tense muscles. His dark eyes stared an equally dark corner of the glade, and I suddenly remembered that corner housed the blue rose bush. The bush was quivering, its whip-like vines snapping back and forth in that frigid breeze. Slowly, as the young man and I watched the bush, the flowers began to close, one by one, petal by petal. The process speeded, the buds sealing themselves so tightly that I doubted anything, mortal or otherwise, could ever pry them apart. All I or any of the others could do was stand there, helpless, and watch as the bush fell asleep once more.

Soon, all that was left of the beautiful flowers was a faint whiff of their perfume, teasing us with what had been mere moments before. Brian closed his eyes and whispered two words. They were low, but tuned as I was to him, I could still hear them above the moaning wind:

"Not yet."

And then the wind began to blow so fiercely that I could no longer see my beloved or the bush or the glade or anything except darkness, a deeper darkness than night or sleep or anything I had ever experienced before. This darkness was alive somehow, so that when I gasped in utter fear, I could hear its low, malevolent snicker. It was thick, like wet cement, and suddenly I had a body with legs, and just as suddenly, the darkness sucked at my legs and rendered me unable to move. I struggled like a fly caught in the spider's web, and just like the fly, I was helpless to escape.

The darkness crept up my legs and flowed like thick sludge across my chest, pinning my arms to my sides. It gushed wetly into my mouth, to absorb my cries and feed itself further on my fear. It oozed into my eyes, so that all I could see, all I could remember seeing and all I would ever see was the darkness. It filled me up to the crown of my head until I began to truly lose consciousness, began to fade away and become the darkness, and it wouldn't be so bad, not really, because maybe I wouldn't be gone completely, maybe she would save me, save us all, maybe it wasn't too late, there was still time, maybe…

And then I woke up.

I didn't scream as I woke—I could still feel the darkness churning and choking me in my mouth, I had no breath to scream at all. The sheets were stuck to my body from the damp, cold sweat that had broken out while I'd dreamed. I sucked in a lungful of air—air that smelled of laundry detergent and dust and absolutely no roses—and tried to control my shuddering.

There was no hope of my ever going back to sleep, so I got out of bed and stood by my open window, ignoring the fresh breeze that trailed in across my window sill. I watched the sunrise and focused on the muted brilliance of the new day. I very carefully did not think of anything from my dreams, not the glade or my Brian (oh, my poor Brian!) or the darkness or especially the blue roses.

It occurred to me, later, after all was said and done, that I had not been myself when the darkness struck me. I had thought of the whys and hows of my predicament, answers that I, Marie Smith, had never known and had certainly forgotten on waking. Who I had been in those final moments of my terrible dream, how I had known those answers, remains a question to which I'm not entirely sure I want to know the answer. That poor person suffered more terribly than I could ever realize, and the guilt I feel now, at not helping them when offered the chance, weighs my soul more heavily than anyone can possibly realize.

That day, for the first time in my entire educational career, I felt compelled to skip class. Whether, as I suspected later, I had been moved to do so by an outside force, or I just didn't feel all that enthused to learn about the Krebs cycle, remains another mystery. I walked down to the library and began, almost at random, to pull books on botany off of the shelves. I earned a couple of dirty looks from Mrs. Anderson, the head librarian, but I didn't care just then if I was messing up her Dewey decimal system. I would (and did) put all the books back, in their proper places, and she knew that. (Honestly? I think it was just a reflex reaction to watching me pile up all the books on a table and just leave them there for a few minutes—not every kid was as considerate as I was in a library.) In any case, she didn't ask me for a pass. I was extremely grateful to her for this courtesy, and so I settled down to my reading.

I read about lilies, and carnations, and hydrangea, and magnolias, and daffodils, and every other kind of flower that had ever been grown—and some that were simply a hazy possibility in the new world of genetic manipulation in agriculture—but mostly, I read about roses; blue roses, to be precise.

There was no such thing as a blue rose in nature—it was simply not possible. Roses lacked the necessary pigment to produce such a blossom. Impossible, my mind repeated, but if I was talking about the flower or the dream, I'm not sure. Perhaps it was both.

Blue roses could be artificially created, though, by dyeing white ones. I flipped to a picture of these flowers, and they looked quite authentic at first glance. When I compared them to my memories of what a real blue rose had looked like in my dreams, though, the dyed ones looked fake and forced. In Victorian times, when flowers were said to be a language of their own, a blue rose meant mystery, or attaining the impossible. I smiled slightly at that. How appropriate.

My eyes froze on the next line.

"They are believed to be able to grant youth or wishes, but always for a price."

A low laugh made my eyes snap away from the book. There, lounging in the chair across from me, looking completely comfortable in the dark jeans and a black t-shirt that was the uniform for my generation, was my Brian.

I gaped at him. I'm afraid my mouth was hanging open, too. Brian smirked and pretended to peer into my throat. "Nice tonsils," he sniggered.

I shut my mouth so hard it clacked. My eyes remained wide, though.

Brian sighed. He relaxed back into his casual slouch and looked back at me. He seemed to be waiting for me to respond, but I was speechless.

"Can't you talk?" he said eventually.

His demeaning tone rubbed me the wrong way, and I felt myself bristling. "Of course!" I snapped.

He leaned back, clearly taken aback. "So the Mouse's got a bite, eh?"

"Mouse?" I repeated, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugged, seemingly unfazed by my attitude. "It seemed an apt description." His voice rose and fell in an unfamiliar accent, but I thought it was perfectly lovely anyway. "It's your dark hair, you see, and your eyes." He leaned forward again to peer into my eyes again. I looked into his dark, deep eyes and saw my still-astonished expression reflected in them. "Yes," he murmured. He flicked a loose bang away from my face, and I felt goosebumps form from the touch. "It's those eyes, indeed."

It was like I was drowning, drowning in the watery darkness of his eyes. I shuddered and drew away then, remembering the feeling of a different darkness on my skin. When I'd recovered from the memory, it occurred to me that I still didn't know the young man's name. I kept my eyes on the page in front of me and traced the petals of the blue rose in the book as I finally asked for his name.

He looked at me carefully before saying simply, "Brian."

That name became engraved in my memory, in my heart. I am now unable to remember the dreams, the conversation, what came after, without calling him Brian. My Brian. My love. Such is the risk when dealing with folk such as Brian's: they will possess you completely, until there is almost no more room for anything in your heart except for them, and there is no way to be rid of them. I tried afterward, tried and failed to erase him from my heart. It was my destiny, my punishment, to love one who would never—could never—love me back.

But again, I've gotten ahead of myself.

After he'd told me his name, I nodded to tell him that I'd heard his answer. We fell quiet, each alone with our own thoughts. I traced the rose with my finger, outlining each and every vein in the petal, as if by drawing the rose, I could somehow bring it back to life, to that full and glorious life that I had seen for those few brief moments in my dream the night before.

"What do you want from me, Brian of the Blue Rose?" I asked him suddenly. He was startled out of his reverie by the question. His legs dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. He opened his mouth to speak, but I immediately shushed him, looking around anxiously for Mrs. Anderson, who would've surely heard the noise.

He was puzzled for a moment (oh, he was so cute when he was confused!). When he realized why I was so nervous, he started laughing. True laughter, it was, laughter like I had heard in my dreams, and the shallow anxiety melted away as I listened to him laugh.

"You're dreaming, Miss Marie Mouse," he chuckled, wiping his eyes. "Don't worry about that—Mrs. Anderson, is it? She won't catch you out, I promise you. But you've done enough studying for today, I think. It's time to leave." He stood up, and I rose with him.

"Where are we going?" I asked him. In answer, he drew me against his body, holding me there with one surprisingly strong arm. I suppressed a gasp—his body was so warm!—and then I couldn't breathe at all anymore as he took one step forward and the world imploded around us.

The wind rushed around my ears, and I buried my face in Brian's hot chest. He smelled of the roses—I named him well when I called him of the Blue Rose—and the smell both comforted and terrified me, because the last place in the whole world I wanted to be was by the rose bush and that total, terrible darkness.

The journey lasted no more than a breath, or maybe two—but maybe, since I couldn't breathe, it was actually longer. It didn't really matter, though. Eventually, Brian and I finally completed the step begun so far away, and we stepped onto a thick and springy lawn. It was twilight in the glade; I could see the first stars start to shine through the branches of the trees that shaded the horizons.

The air itself smelled of roses, and I instinctively lifted my head away from Brian to look at the bush in the corner. There, in the shadows even now, was the glorious, impossible rosebush. In the center of the thick foliage and closed flowers, there was a single, deep blue bloom bobbing in the evening breeze. It was from this flower that the perfume came.

Brian stiffened when I noticed the rose. He gently turned me in his arms until I had to tilt my head back to look into his eyes. They were black now, black as the approaching night, and more serious than I had ever seen them.

"You asked me what I wanted from you, Marie Smith," he said solemnly. All I could do was nod as his voice echoed in my ears. It sounded serious, and final, like a last goodbye.

"I need you to make my—our," he corrected roughly, and my heart leapt to hear the correction. Perhaps he cared for me, then, a little. (Maybe he did, at the time; I'll never know.) "Our roses bloom. Can you do that, Mousling?" He smiled half a smile at me, a crooked smile that reminded me so much of the smile from the night before that my breath caught in my throat.

"What," I asked when I could speak again, "what exactly must I do?"

His eyes closed, and I sensed a great exhaustion settling on him. "You must first pluck a rose, and after that…" He trailed off. Before I could ask him to continue, he seemed to gather his strength and said more clearly, "After that, I don't know."

My shock was palpable. "You don't know?" My voice cracked on the final word.

Brian closed his eyes, as if my very tone had undone whatever hope he'd had in me. He repeated, "I don't know. Only a human can pick my rose before it closes until the next solstice; only a human maiden can save me and my people from the darkness."

As he spoke, I could feel it gathering in the long shadows of the trees, in the shorter shadows of the grasses. I fancied that I could feel it sticking my shoes to the lawn, ready to overcome my feet and legs and body and soul as soon as the sun had set.

And it was setting. I felt the despair from Brian as he watched me stand there, motionless, in the light of the setting sun. "Will you help us, Marie Smith?" he asked me again, and this time I heard his voice crack because he was scared of what my indecision might cost him.

I turned to look at the rose on the bush. I had no knife, no sharp-edged thing to sever it from the vine. And the thorns, the thorns would tear into my tender, scholarly flesh should I so much as touch it. If I were to do it, I would have to do it soon. The night was coming, and with it the darkness that I dreaded with every fiber of my being, the darkness that frightened my Brian.

While I thought about my decision, the rose began to twist on its stem. Slowly, so slowly that I didn't notice immediately, the petals began to close. Half of the petals had tightened on themselves by the time I saw what was happening, and with a feral cry I turned to face Brian.

But Brian was no longer there. Instead, there was a young tree, a strong oak tree that was growing upward even as I watched, twisting with the rose. Darkness spread from its branches, seeping away from its dusky shadow and reaching for me with tentacles blacker than the night that was rapidly descending on the glade.

I screamed with fear and, pulling my feet from the tacky ground, I threw myself away from the reaching darkness. I scuttled backward, flinching as the darkness in the grass cast up lines across my hands to restrain me to the thick, freezing lawn, as if I was Gulliver cast among the tiny residents of Lilliput. I screamed again in sheer terror. Ripping free of the clinging restraints, I ran as fast as I could across the glade to the rosebush.

There was but a few petals left open on the flower when I reached the bush. The perfume hit my face and, for a moment, the darkness retreated from both my feet and my mind. Sighing, my fear momentarily banished, I reached for the nodding bud. I touched a petal as soft as satin, but it slipped against my fingertip to glue itself wetly against the others. The setting sun blazed for one brief moment before it slipped for its daily rest beneath the western horizon. Night had fallen, and I did not have the rose.

I slumped against the ground, heedless now of the seeping darkness boiling around me. I had lingered for too long, stopped to think about the consequences for too long, been too afraid to do anything but stare as my love slipped away from me. I could have saved him—I could have saved them all—but I had been too timid. I laughed harshly as the darkness rose to wrap around my belly. I was truly the mouse Brian had named me for.

I will not linger on what happened afterwards, when I woke up from my journey to the glade and through the darkness, lying across my books in the library. It was not a pleasant quest I had now undertaken; it is extremely painful to try to live without your heart, doubly so if it is entirely your fault that your heart is gone, it and the one that you gave it to.

I ate, and did my work, and slept when my body screamed for it. I never dreamt anymore, a small blessing in a life that seemed devoid of meaning. I went to college and became a librarian—a good occupation for a mouse like me, who would rather read about life than experiencing it for myself.

Morgan McCollum, despite my newfound depression, remained my friend for all those years. She could lift me from my misery for a time, even though she, like all of our friends and family, had no idea why I was so listless.

Actually, the one who could best pull me back from my self-made despair was my goddaughter, Chyna McCollum. She was inquisitive and bright like her mother, bold and chatty like I had never been. I like to think that her caring, nurturing side came from me and my influence on her life. She liked to call me her Faery Godmother, a title which I might have deserved and been in actuality, if things had gone differently those many years ago.

I made it my life's work to teach her the things she should know, the things I should've known in that forest glade. I taught her to have faith that everything will somehow, someway, be okay; to pay certain prices, no matter what the cost, because some things—the important things—are worth the expense; to understand that, no matter what happened, that she would never be alone and there would always be someone to help her complete whatever task awaited her.

Most importantly, I taught her to be unselfish with love, how you must give yourself completely to whatever you cared about so that you would let nothing and no one take it from you.

She grew older and enchanted the boys around her with her shining, golden locks and her mysterious, dark eyes. She studied, but not overly much. She went to parties, but was always promptly home by midnight. She dated, but never seriously.

And she always, always wanted to hear a bedtime story. As honorary aunt and permanent fixture in the McCollum house—it was only me, her mother, and myself, her father having been killed by a drunk driver when she was very young—it was my job to tell her the story. As a librarian, I always had a ready supply of new stories to read when she got tired of the old ones, and she enjoyed the new as much as she enjoyed the old.

I enjoyed this part of my life. It was always the easy time of the day for me, this time when my goddaughter floated between wakefulness and sleep. It was the time when I could banish the darkness that still lingered to this day in my mind and think only of the love my shattered heart managed to have for this earthly, sweet angel in my life.

But one night, she sat up in bed and didn't ask for a story. I had noticed that Chyna had been more subdued of late, less inclined to talk and more inclined to think and stare at whatever object happened to be stationary at the time. She'd been so absentminded, she'd hurt her hand at school the day before and returned home with a bandage wrapped around her palm. Morgan had clucked and fussed as I had changed the dirty wrap. The wounds were small puncture marks, lined up neatly across the center of her hand. When I asked Chyna what had happened, she'd laughed and said she'd be more careful next time.

I had my suspicions about her injuries, but I kept them to myself. If I shared my concerns to Morgan, she would either laugh me off or completely overreact to something that I wasn't even completely sure about.

It was four days to Christmas, and the snow was falling silently outside of Chyna's window. It was nearly dark outside—the night came early on the shortest day of the year—and I shivered slightly, though the room was warm within. Chyna asked me something, and I dragged myself out of my morbid memory of a summer evening long gone to try to hear her.

"I'm sorry, Chyna, what was that?"

"I said, do you know anything about blue roses?" she repeated. She looked at me expectantly, certainly not aware that my heart was pounding in my chest as she asked me this seemingly innocent question.

I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and replied, "What do you want to know?" I was absurdly proud of myself that my voice did not tremble and reveal my tremulous emotions.

She rested her head on her knees and looked at me. Her eyes were dark—the bedside lamp was situated behind her head—and reminded me of another pair, a pair so like hers (and mine) but deeper than anything she could ever have imagined. "I don't know. Anything, I guess."

I took a deep breath and rose to face the window. The setting sun was barely visible through the flurries, but it gave me enough courage to answer my goddaughter's question. "Blue roses don't exist. Not in nature, anyway. You have to make them out of white roses." I stopped. Tears had flooded my throat and rendered me unable to speak any further.

Chyna was silent for a time, thinking about what I'd told her. Then: "Anything else, Faery Godmother?"

I couldn't help it; a watery chuckle escaped me. What a time for my silly nickname!

"Godmother?" Chyna's voice was full of loving concern. "Are you okay?"

I quickly swiped my eyes (when had tears appeared on my face?). "Yes, of course. And…Blue roses mean mystery. Or attaining the impossible. They also…" I had to clear my throat again. "They say blue roses can also grant eternal youth or a wish, but a price must be paid in return."

It was short, and quickly smothered, but I heard Chyna's gasp. I smiled a little. She was a smart girl; of course she'd put two and two together, at last, when no one else had.

"What did you wish for, Godmother?" Chyna asked me quietly, her eyes wide in the dim room. I chuckled. No affirmation of her guess, no wonder or awe at the implications, just a calm acceptance of the facts. It affirmed a guess I'd been forming for the past week about my goddaughter.

"Nothing, Chyna." I stepped to the door of her room, snapping the light off as I reached the frame. I could still see Chyna's silhouette, outlined in the light from the hall. "I wished for nothing." I left her then, with the door open a crack, for I would never leave my goddaughter in complete darkness.

I dreamt that night for the first time in over twenty years. I was in the glade again, though it had changed slightly from the green one from my memory. The trees and ground were coated in a thick, fluffy layer of the new snow that had fallen this evening. I was a ghost again; no tracks appeared as I floated towards the corner where I knew a rosebush would be waiting, sleeping under its blanket of snow.

Sleeping, the bush was, save for a single blue rose. For it was the Midwinter Solstice, and it was time for the rose to be plucked once again. I could sense the darkness nearing this tiny place, closing in once more on this sacred glade, but this time, it would not win.

A panting behind me made me turn around, but I was not worried. There was only one soul who this could be, and I was proved right when Chyna pushed aside a pine branch, ignoring the snow falling on her head as she came closer to the bush. She stopped nearly inside my ghostly space, so close that I could feel her chest moving with the force of her breath and hear the thunder of her heart. It was racing a mile a minute, from either fear or excitement, though I suspected it was the latter.

I watched, patient, as she slowly raised her hand and gently touched the rose's stem with her still-bandaged hand. I noticed she was careful to avoid the thorns, and if I had had a mouth, I would've smiled wryly. Doesn't make the same mistake twice, my Chyna.

The rose fell away from the bush into her hand as neatly as if she'd cut it with shears. She lifted it to her nose and inhaled deeply. I could smell the perfume from where I was, the same heady scent that had haunted my waking hours for the past twenty years.

She lowered the blossom until it nearly touched her mouth. Her breath melted the frost that had formed on the petals as she whispered into its scented heart, "A kiss breaks all spells, right, Godmother?"

She brushed her lips across the scented petals, and the glade exploded.

Suddenly, my goddaughter was no longer alone. The snow melted away as the trees surrounding the glade became the glorious beings they had been long ago, before the terrible darkness had descended upon their wonderfully impossible blue roses. They danced and whirled around my Chyna in the newly found meadow, but she had no eyes but for the young man with the red hair and dark eyes holding her shoulders in front of her, and he for her. Between them, they held a single blue rose, a wish for the impossible.

"What would you wish, my love?" Brian whispered to Chyna, and both she and I shivered with the sound of that lovely voice that had been silenced for too long.

Chyna thought briefly. "I have all that I could ever want or need," she replied with a brilliant smile that rivaled the sun that was rising above the treetops. "But I would wish for my Faery Godmother to be herself once more, to undo her wish of nothing. I would wish to give her a second chance."

Brian considered the request. "There is a price to be paid," he reminded her, but Chyna's smile only widened.

"Ah, but she has already paid, my heart. Her heart was given so long ago, for a wish that was never fulfilled. Return it, and let her live once more as I have lived."

"As you wish," Brian said to his bride, and they kissed to seal the bargain.

I gently woke from that dream, with merry music ringing in my ears and a lightening of my heart that I had not felt for a very long time. The snow had stopped, I saw, and but the music did not. I threw back my covers and raced to the window, where I spied a lonely duo of carolers standing watch outside of our front gate. They would never come in uninvited, I realized with a slight gasp.

I grabbed my dressing robe and raced down the stairs to the front door. Chyna met me as I opened the door and, without a word, we raced down the snowy walk to the gate. I opened the gate without the slightest hesitation, and there they stood.

Our lives. Our loves.

My Brian was taller now, and had filled out to adulthood. His hair was streaked with silver, and there was a solemnity about him that made him more mature than the Brian in my memories, but that was perfectly all right. I had experienced much as well, and he was a perfect fit for me, as he had always been and always would be.

The second figure was slender, with bright red hair and merry eyes that sparkled against the pure white snow. That was my past, and now, as I noticed Chyna staring at him with her heart in my eyes, he was another's future.

"We came to return something, Miss Mouse," said my Brian, and my chest heated as he spoke my nickname.

I nearly didn't speak, so overcome was I with this impossible and complete reversal of events, but I hadn't waited for him for twenty years to lose my voice now. "What if I don't want it back?"

My Brian blinked, then erupted into chuckles. He swept me into his warm arms, still laughing. "I suppose I shall have to keep it then, eh, Brendan?"

I must've looked confused, because he chuckled again (it felt so good to hear his laughter again!) and turned me until I was facing a bemused Chyna and her lover. "Brendan?" I repeated, and quirked my eyebrow.

He mimicked my action and tone. "Suits me, doesn't it, Ma?"

"Ma?!"

They laughed at my astonished expression. Before I could say a word of protest, I was twisted around again and a pair of warm and surprisingly soft lips had pressed against mine. We, me and my goddaughter, stood standing in the snow, kissing our true loves for quite some time, or so says Morgan. She, apparently, had been standing in the doorway and seen the whole thing. Her first question to me, as we trooped into the house, wet and laughing, was if this was the mystery man.

"Mystery man?" Brian asked me with a smirk.

I giggled and pecked his cheek. Turning to Morgan, I answered simply, "Yes."

She stared for a moment, and then she smiled so big I thought her face would crack. I suppose it was a reflection of mine. She reached across and smacked Brian across the head. "It's about bloody time you showed up!"

Brian and I got married the following summer. Brendan was the best man, and Chyna was my maid of honor. I'd first offered the position to Morgan, but she'd waved me off. "I'm planning the wedding," she'd smiled. "I don't need to be worrying about how I look in a bridesmaid's dress, too!"

Chyna and Brendan got married that winter before they left for a tour of Europe, courtesy of her mother and my husband and me. They'll enter college in the fall, where Chyna intends to study botany and Brendan, ancient folklore. (I have a feeling that he just wants to show off in front of his classmates and his wife.)

My life is so full of joy now that the darkness feels like a distant memory, and so it is. With my heart at my side and the wisdom from my mistakes, I know that there's nothing I can't do. And so, I will leave you with this tale, this record of my life, in the hopes that you do not repeat the same mistake that I did, and if you do, that you be granted a second chance every bit as miraculous and wonderful as I was.

And may the road rise to meet you.  
May the wind be always at your back.  
May the sun shine warm upon your face.  
May the rains fall gently upon your fields.  
And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.


End file.
